Aldermary House is a modern multi-tenanted, multi-story office building located in the City of London's "Square Mile" financial district. Aldermary is part of the office portfolio of the Australian diversified property group - Stockland Ventures.
The situation
Aldermary House is home to eight different businesses, each operating on separate floors within the building. Visitors would buzz the intercom, be granted entry by a security guard at the main reception desk where they would sign in, and then be able to visit a tenanting company.
Multi-tenanted buildings are prone to a myriad of security risks, access issues and periods where the building is completely empty.
Brian Weekes, Building Manager at Aldermary House was faced with complex security challenges and as a result used a 24 hour manned guard solution to ensure the building was secure at all times. "A manned guarding contract was the best solution available to us at the time, however it was costly and difficult to manage," commented Weekes. "It was a constant challenge knowing exactly who was in the building at any one time."
Weekes approached his security partner, SecureWais UK Ltd to find a new and improved solution that would alleviate the heavy financial costs and inefficiency associated with manned guarding. It is estimated that Aldermary House was spending in the region of £40,000-50,000 per annum on out of hours manned guarding.
The solution
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| The "Meet and Greet" system provides Aldermary House with integrated access control, video and intercom for security |
Having carefully assessed the requirement, SecureWais proposed the installation of a new integrated access control, video and intercom "Meet & Greet" system which would transform the way people would enter and leave Aldermary House and still meet security requirements.
"We have used Honeywell solutions for many years and had very little hesitation in recommending the WIN-PAK™ Pro Central Station as the correct solution for Weekes' requirement," stated Allan Waisman, CEO SecureWais
The system was fully installed over a period of two weeks with no resulting disruption to the client.
An important element in the system design was for the access, intercom and video to be remotely monitored at a secure control room. This would alleviate the need for a control room onsite and reduce costly manned guarding contracts.
To address the visitor management issues faced by Weekes during out of hour's periods, an outstation was installed by SecureWais to the external façade of the building adjacent to the main entrance. Upon arrival, the visitor presses the call button and is immediately connected to the SecureWais National Security Institute (NSI) approved call centre.
The call centre has audio and video communications with Aldermary House. When activated, the call centre operative asks the visitor a set of questions before contacting the relevant host. This could be the office manager of the given tenant. Once contacted, the host provides authorisation and the visitor is granted entry. Then the call centre terminates the site link and the SecureWais "Meet & Greet" service is completed. To close the loop, a video recording is kept on the Digital Video Recorder (DVR).
| A remote call centre monitors visitors to Aldermary House and provides authorisation for them to enter |
The building / security management team remain in complete control of the access control card administration but do so by emailing the SecureWais office to have cards added or deleted remotely. Database reports are available at any time.
To provide this critical service and solve the challenges faced by Weekes, SecureWais chose Honeywell WIN-PAK™ PRO Central Station.
Honeywell WIN-PAK PRO Central Station is a departure from traditional access control systems. It removes the tasks of installing software (because the software is run from the Central Station on a secure server) and managing operating systems on site. Any potential computer compatibility or virus protection issues can also be dealt with easily away from site.
The total cost of ownership is reduced to a manageable service fee, which results in the end-user benefiting from lower maintenance costs, lower guarding costs and peace of mind that visitor management and building entry is controlled at all times.
The system at Aldermary House consists of the Honeywell N1000 Access Panel, several proximity readers within the elevator and on selected doors integrated with video and door entry intercom.